Custom Business Ethics Essay

Ethics refers to an established code of behavior that makes the behavior of a given group uniform and predictable. One of the reasons for unification of ethics is to demarcate personal feelings from delivered services. Groups such as physicians and automobile engineers have an established code of moral values, which govern their relationship with other members of the society.

The core effect that is brought about by ethics lies in making delivered services uniform between all the providers, as described earlier. Ethics is not only a preserve of people of the same professional group, but a code of principles that can be established in a workplace or between business partners to make people’s relationships professional and predictable. This is primarily done as in the above cases to govern people’s behavior for efficient performance in the various aspects (Jennings, 2006.).

After a code of ethics has been developed and established in an organization, a methodical approach is adopted to rigorously raise the responsiveness among members of such groups. Called an ethics plan, this includes a series of intimately associated actions, such as guiding and educating members, as well as availing resources necessary for people to behave accordingly. More resources are also availed for the purpose of identification and resolution of ethical problems.

Without ethics, actions of firms, as well as other people, can not be guaranteed. Clients may sometimes take a lot of time scrutinizing and vetting firms to assure that services will be delivered in an ethical manner. Government does likewise, and the solution to this is the development of ethics in a working environment to save the clients’ and government’s time. This also has an effect of boosting clients ‘faith in a given organization. In this regard, many firms, and more importantly the starting ones, need to have an ethics program for the prospective clients to feel secure and assured.

The code of conduct to be developed should ensure that the three partners are not exposed to criminal behavior. For instance, ethics should be applied to banking procedures so that a partner can not defraud others. In addition, a capital contribution of each partner should be significant to reduce instances of adventurous management of the company’s money, which may lead to losses.

As regards the above case, it should be clearly specified that none of the partners should enter into any agreement in the company’s name. This would ensure that none of the partners/promoters makes a commitment that would cause losses to the company. In this case, any of the promoters would only alert the company’s management to evaluate new opportunities regarding any eminent profitable opportunities for careful vetting. The opportunities that have been vetted and proven profitable are pursued, as well as the ones whose risks can be managed effectively.

The other part of the stipulated code of behavior is to stipulate that bank details and signatories should be people directly specified by the company’s owners or management. This can either be the three promoters or a financial manager hired by the firm, whose mandate would be to ensure that issues concerning money are handled by one person who is answerable to them. This would encourage responsible behavior of the person in charge of finances. Additionally, this person must be selected on the basis of high integrity. This procedure should involve vetting of several or all the 15 members of the workforce to ensure that they are people of high social standing. During vetting of the workers, the potential employees should be required to provide documents from relevant government agencies, showing that they hold no criminal records. This should be set forth clearly in the recruitment ethics (Reamer, 1998.).

The company under discussion seems to be paid by non-profit-making organizations that obtain funds from government sources. This problem should be deliberated on, as public money is involved here. It means that the firm should be extremely proactive to fight such ills as corruption and bribery. It should be stipulated in the code of conduct that corruption, bribery and other social ills are discouraged. This should also be communicated to clients and other people as a part of the company’s ethics.

Many companies claim that only natural and repetitive issues, such as dress code and rules describing subordination, should be reflected in a worker’s code of conduct. It should also encourage all parties involved to fight social evils. Contrary to this classical belief, the company’s list of ethically acceptable attitude and behavior should feature prominently. It should also be written in the visitor’s code of conduct that the firm’s policies are against all sorts of social ills.

Apart from the general rules that were developed many years ago, each company should have its own code of conduct, which corresponds to its needs. Dynamic rules describing current issues, such as cybercrime and issues relating to drugs abuse, should be specified exhaustively. The company can state its stand on such issues and provide its employees with a directive towards the same. This directive should be availed to workers, clients and management. The same can also be extended to include shareholders of the company. There should be a clear-cut format of detecting any form of wrongdoing in the organization, which is clearly stipulated in the written rules.

All the above parts of an ethics system can not be effective when applied singly. Therefore, they need to be combined with more parts to form a larger system. There should be a monitoring system to ensure that all the codes of ethics in terms of rules, regulations and inspirational notes are followed. Any newly-founded company should have a system of monitoring the success of application of the code of ethics. This is necessary to ensure that employees adopt them continuously and successfully. The firm under discussion should stipulate correct intervals of independent auditing, to monitor actions of all employees according to its rules. The overall effect of this should be to prevent instances of immoral behavior in the firm, as well as quick detection of the same.

The oversight mechanism should ensure that any wrongdoing is detected at the earliest time possible. In addition, the company should ensure that the responsibilities of every employee do not overlap with those of others. This would foster easy detection of any wrongdoing, as well as its source. Furthermore, there should be a provision in the code of conduct for each member of the staff, as well as a promoter suspected of misconduct, to exit pending conclusive investigation. This can be highly instrumental in fostering quick investigation, finding the culpable party and minimizing adverse consequences. During an investigation, the company is required to maintain a neutral position; however, this is not adequate for firms in today’s world.

It earns a firm a fantastic deal in the form of reputation through fearless demonstration of sound legal and ethical philosophy during the entire period of investigation, as well as any other time. If the firm’s ethics demonstrates an unswayable stand against any ills committed by any member of the company, this has the potential of reducing fines significantly, if such a firm is found guilty. All the above will enhance the company’s standing and importance to all members of the society.

The procedure described above is not a code of ethics in itself. It is a framework that can be used to form a firm bases for the formulation of an ethics program. These statutes will enable firms to formulate rules according to unique challenges facing them. An ethics program is supposed to ensure that workers continuously learn and adopt to the rules. The next procedure should involve enhancing workers and promoters’ knowledge of relevant ethics in order to run the firm effectively. Members of the public and clients will ultimately learn and align themselves to the company’s code of ethics, if it works for their improvement.

At this juncture, the ethics program is not fully formed, as the new company is to work out a modality to ensure that its workers are well-educated regarding the expected code of behavior. The three promoters ought to have learned this before formulating responsibilities for each one of them, as well as a penalty for defaulting and failure to honor promises by any faction, which should come with a penalty. The fifteen members of the workforce should be trained before they start executing their various duties. This training should include learning the firm’s ethics and morality in the form of rules and regulations. The training course should be long enough and sufficiently interactive to enable the workers to get adequate knowledge necessary to uphold the morals of the company.

The training program should be regular, so that any new worker can access it. Previously discussed issues, such as corruption and drug abuse, should feature prominently among other issues. Additionally, interpersonal relationship should also be governed by the firm’s ethics. Training should be accompanied by a mode of evaluation with an aim of rewarding compliant members of the workforce. Providing a consultant service means that non-profit firms will always need these services. These firms are likely to pick behaviors that are practiced in this firm better than what is taught to them through the word of mouth. Therefore, it is worthwhile for the consultancy firm to ensure that its employees do not display unethical behavior to other people.

To ensure effective training, the curriculum is to be reviewed regularly to include emerging issues in business and government operations. Revision of the curriculum should be based on proper auditing of the existing system, as demonstrated above. Apart from a regular external auditing, the company should work out internal oversight mechanisms to evaluate day- to-day progress of the company’s ethics and their effects on service delivery (Scarborough, Wilson, & Zimmerer, 2009).

The success of an ethics program cannot be measured solely on the basis of the systems established, but on the effects they have one the running of the company. If the company is managed effectively due to managers adopting sound moral, it can be viewed as the most revealing pointer to success of the ethics program. Another indicator of the system’s success is whether promoters refrain from fraudulent activities and strive to develop the company to achieve further growth. The third measure may include evaluation of performance of employees. The systems can be considered effective if they lead to development of attitude and behavior necessary for employees to do their best.

Other benefits that may accrue from adoption of a sound ethics program involve easy identification of planned misconduct, ease of investigation of such cases and easy identification of a culpable party. The ethics program must also ensure that the new company suffers least in the form of fines, in case it has been found guilty of any misconduct.

In conclusion, an ethics program requires that steps be followed in a way that ensures that a desired goal is achieved. In today’s business world, many people would find it hard to work with a business that has not demonstrated zeal to promote sound ethics in its operation. Additionally, sound ethics in firms has been found to be instrumental in increasing their performance. High performance is achieved through reduction of such malpractices as corruption and other fraudulent activities in the company. Finally, a firm that has adopted a sound ethics program loses less in terms of fines accruing from various malpractices.